XY ee | TownsEnD, In Audubon’s Labrador. 143 
It was a beautiful day as we sailed on over an emerald ocean of 
such clarity that we could see the bottom at several fathoms depth 
and soon found ourselves sailing northeast straight in among a maze 
of islands. After a passage of five miles through a waterway, a mile 
broad, we turned east and entered the eighteen mile passage between 
the islands and the shore, known as La Petite Rigolette. Audubon 
had wished to see something of this coast “ crowded with islands of all 
sizes and forms, against which the raging waves break in a frightful 
manner,” but his pilot was afraid to venture in and they sailed on, 
sadly buffetted over the turbulent Gulf as far as Bradore Bay. 
Far different was our sail through the Rigolette which resembled 
a quiet inland river and finally debouched into a land locked basin 
over five miles in diameter, an inland lake with rocky semi-moun- 
tainous sides at the mouth of the great River St. Augustine. The 
waters here were comparatively birdless, for the Indians and fisher- 
men,— the latter provided with motorboats,— were doing their 
deadly work. I found plenty of ornithological interest, however, 
on shore here and at Sandy Isle. At the latter place, a Black Duck 
in her attempts to draw me away from a reedy pool where her 
young were hidden, performed the wounded bird act on land, and 
I could plainly see that she was not the red-legged species which 
breeds still further north. 
Sailing on, we entered what appeared to be a narrow rapid river, 
the entrance to Shekatika Inlet, sometimes called Jacques Cartier’s 
Harbor. After we had passed the rapids, the shores widened and 
we sailed as in a rock-bound lake, surrounded by miniature moun- 
tains. There were little sandy beaches and pockets of forests in 
protected gullies. Again, the water narrowed ahead of us and we 
entered a second rapids. It emerged into another and larger 
basin over two miles in diameter. Passing through this, we turned 
abruptly to the northeast and entered a small but lovely basin. 
All the valleys were heavily forested and the tree line on the hills 
was much higher than near the mouth of the inlet. We had sailed 
eight miles from the entrance of Shekatika Bay to the entrance of 
the Inlet, and ten or twelve miles from there to our anchorage 
at the head of the Inlet. We had come from the Arctic zone with 
the trees flat on the ground to the Hudsonian zone of spruce and 
fir trees fifteen or twenty feet high. Here and there a giant black 
spruce, bare for the most with a tuft of dark foliage on its summit 
